2026 Conference Information At A Glance

Date: April 24-25, 2026 (Friday & Saturday)

Location: IUP Campus, Sprowls Hall, McVitty Auditorium & Synchronously via Zoom

Registration Form: (COMING SOON) 

Schedule: (COMING SOON)

IUP English Graduate Organization 2025 Spring Conference Call for Papers

Voices of Literature and Society: What Is Said and Unsaid 

Rilke wrote, “These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.” One wonders, on the heels of sentiments like these, if perhaps what is unsaid is as important as what is. If what exists in the liminal matters as much, or more than, what it leads to. While we tend to remember, ruminate on, and analyze what is said, this often comes at the expense of the unsaid. Yet, the invisible or silent words are the foundation of the visible and spoken ones. 

In which literary and cultural spaces can we best examine the interplay between silence, quiet, disquiet, loudness? Can film, for example, hold spaces of quiet which the novel cannot? Can poetry not speak in a manner which is, in essence, the semiotic language of cultural protest? Can technology give voices to those who have none? Can silence be used to amplify voices of those who have been historically silenced, or is volume necessary to evoke change?

Topics for proposals may include, but are not limited to, ideas of:

• Literary quietude and loudness

• Communication of the voiceless (nature, towns, houses, nonhuman animals) 

• The function of form and structure as literary or rhetorical voice 

• Voices across genre and period

• Expected or unexpected voices in rhetoric

• The marginalized voices and boundaries of oppression

• Racio- and sociolinguistics 

• Artificial Intelligence and the implications of its voice

• Diversity of voice

• Transmission of voice

We welcome 250 word abstracts proposing relevant papers, to be grouped holistically by the board in one of the following formats:

• Traditional panel, where 3-4 participants read a formal paper of 15-20 minutes (2500-3000 words) as set by the chair, followed by Q&A.

• Creative session, where 3-4 participants read their work in poetry, fiction, nonfiction or other genres, followed by Q&A.

All formats can be either in-person or virtual.

Please submit your abstract and a brief biographical statement to iupgradego@gmail.com by November 2, 2025 by 11:59 pm EST. 

Landscapes of Language and Literature (2025)

Masks and Masking (2024)

Time and its Influences (2023)

Inclusivity Beyond Diversity (2022)